It is frequently desirable in medical practice to cause blood to flow through an extracorporeal circuit, e.g., during surgery, dialysis, etc. When this is done, the blood may come to contain undesirable foreign matter, e.g., tissue or bone debris resulting from surgery or injury, gas bubbles, clots, or other matter which it is desirable to remove from the blood before it returns to the body.
There are several blood filter assembly structures known to and/or used by the art. Among these are Esmond U.S. Pat. No. 3,795,088, Luceyk et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,038,194 and Mouwen U.S. Pat. No. 4,056,476, the disclosures of which are incorporated by reference herein. Other known blood filters are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,457,339; 3,696,932 and 3,701,433, the disclosures of which are also incorporated herein by reference.